The first blow against fashionable immorality having been boldly struck, was followed up systematically. In 1690 was founded "The Society for the Reformation of Manners," which published every year an account of the progress made in suppressing profaneness and debauchery by its means. It continued its operations till 1738, and during its existence prosecuted, according to its own calculations, 101,683 persons. William III. showed himself prompt to encourage the movement which his subjects had begun. The _London Gazette_ of 27th February, 1698-99, contains a report of the following remarkable order:

"His Majesty being informed, That, notwithstanding an order made the 4th of June, 1697, by the Earl of Sunderland, then Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household, to prevent the Prophaneness and Immorality of the Stage, several Plays have been lately acted containing expressions contrary to Religion and Good Manners: and whereas the Master of the Revels has represented, That, in contempt of the said order, the actors do often neglect to leave out such Prophane and Indecent expressions as he has thought proper to be omitted. These are therefore to signifie his Majesty's pleasure, that you do not hereafter presume to act anything in any play contrary to Religion and Good Manners as you shall answer it at your utmost peril. Given under my Hand this 18th of February, 1698. In the eleventh year of his Majesty's reign."

It is difficult to realise, in reading the terms of this order, that only thirteen years had elapsed since the death of Charles II., and undoubtedly a very large share of the credit due for such a revolution in the public taste is to be a.s.signed to Collier. Collier, however, did nothing in a literary or artistic sense to improve the character of English literature.

His severity, uncompromising as that of the Puritans, inspired Vice with terror, but could not plead with persuasion on behalf of Virtue; his sweeping conclusions struck at the roots of Art as well as of Immorality.

He sought to destroy the drama and kindred pleasures of the Imagination, not to reform them. What the age needed was a writer to satisfy its natural desires for healthy and rational amus.e.m.e.nt, and Steele, with his strongly-developed twofold character, was the man of all others to bridge over the chasm between irreligious licentiousness and Puritanical rigidity. Driven headlong on one side of his nature towards all the tastes and pleasures which absorbed the Court of Charles II., his heart in the midst of his dissipation never ceased to approve of whatever was great, n.o.ble, and generous. He has described himself with much feeling in his disquisition on the _Rake_, a character which he says many men are desirous of a.s.suming without any natural qualifications for supporting it:

"A Rake," says he, "is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives one day is certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature; all which he must have by nature and education before he can be allowed to be or to have been of this order.... His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures before reason has power to come in to his rescue."

That impulsiveness of feeling which is here described, and which was the cause of so many of Steele's failings in real life, made him the most powerful and persuasive advocate of Virtue in fiction. Of all the imaginative English essayists he is the most truly natural. His large heart seems to rush out in sympathy with any tale of sorrow or exhibition of magnanimity; and even in criticism, his true natural instinct, joined to his const.i.tutional enthusiasm, often raises his judgments to a level with those of Addison himself, as in his excellent essay in the _Spectator_ on Raphael's cartoons. Examples of these characteristics in his style are to be found in the _Story of Unnion and Valentine_,[34] and in the fine paper describing two tragedies of real life;[35] in the series of papers on duelling, occasioned by a duel into which he was himself forced against his own inclination;[36] and in the sound advice which Isaac gives to his half-sister Jenny on the morrow of her marriage.[37]

Perhaps, however, the chivalry and generosity of feeling which make Steele's writings so attractive are most apparent in the delightful paper containing the letter of Serjeant Hall from the camp before Mons. After pointing out to his readers the admirable features in the serjeant's simple letter, Steele concludes as follows:

"If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet at the battle of Coldstream, in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the regiment now called Coldstream, from the victory of that day--I remember it as well as if it were yesterday; I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now at Chelsea--I say to me, who know very well this part of mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a n.o.bler, impulse than that of gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellowship and the communication of joys and sorrows which quickens the relish of pleasure and abates the anguish of pain. Add to this that they have the same regard to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for; but I will engage Serjeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths rather than that a word should be spoken at the Red Lettice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion, then, of the Serjeant's letter, I p.r.o.nounce the style to be mixed, but truly epistolary; the sentiment relating to his own wound in the sublime; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell in the gay; and the whole the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes."[38]

With such excellences of style and sentiment it is no wonder that the _Tatler_ rapidly established itself in public favour. It was a novel experience for the general reader to be provided three times a week with entertainment that pleased his imagination without offending his sense of decency or his religious instincts. But a new hand shortly appeared in the _Tatler_, which was destined to carry the art of periodical essay-writing to a perfection beside which even the humour of Steele appears rude and unpolished. Addison and Steele had been friends since boyhood. They had been contemporaries at the Charter House, and, as we have seen, Steele had sometimes spent his holidays in the parsonage of Addison's father. He was a postmaster at Merton about the same time that his friend was a Fellow of Magdalen. The admiration which he conceived for the hero of his boyhood lasted, as so often happens, through life; he exhibited his veneration for him in all places, and even when Addison indulged his humour at his expense he showed no resentment. Addison, on his side, seems to have treated Steele with a kind of gracious condescension. The latter was one of the few intimate friends to whom he unbent in conversation; and while he was Under-Secretary of State he aided him in the production of _The Tender Husband_, which was dedicated to him by the author. Of this play Steele afterwards declared with characteristic impulse that many of the most admired pa.s.sages were the work of his friend, and that he "thought very meanly of himself that he had never publicly avowed it."

The authorship of the _Tatler_ was at first kept secret to all the world.

It is said that the hand of Steele discovered itself to Addison on reading in the fifth number a remark which he remembered to have himself made to Steele on the judgment of Virgil, as shown in the appellation of "Dux Troja.n.u.s," which the Latin poet a.s.signs to aeneas, when describing his adventure with Dido in the cave, in the place of the usual epithet of "pius" or "pater." Thereupon he offered his services as a contributor, and these were of course gladly accepted. The first paper sent by Addison to the _Tatler_ was No. 18, wherein is displayed that inimitable art which makes a man appear infinitely ridiculous by the ironical commendation of his offences against right, reason, and good taste. The subject is the approaching peace with France, and it is noticeable that the article of foreign news, which had been treated in previous _Tatlers_ with complete seriousness, is here for the first time invested with an air of pleasantry. The distress of the news-writers at the prospect of peace is thus described:

"There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys, or by what other name or t.i.tle soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes when our armies have lain still, and given the general a.s.sault to many a place when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it, and completed victories when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands Boyer has slain his ten thousands. This gentleman can indeed be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inexpressible fury, and, like offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of two or three ages to repair....

It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to subsist after a peace: every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles the Second, when they could not furnish out a single paper of news without lighting up a comet in Germany or a fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies were grown so familiar that they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer, who is justly looked upon by all the foxhunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales, in so much that in five months' time (for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porp.u.s.s.es and a sturgeon."

The appearance of Addison as a regular contributor to the _Tatler_ gradually brought about a revolution in the character of the paper. For some time longer, indeed, articles continued to be dated from the different coffee-houses, but only slight efforts were made to distinguish the materials furnished from White's, Will's, or Isaac's own apartment.

When the hundredth number was reached a fresh address is given at Shere Lane, where the astrologer lived, and henceforward the papers from White's and Will's grow extremely rare; those from the Grecian may be said to disappear; and the foreign intelligence, dated from St. James', whenever it is inserted, which is seldom, is as often as not made the text of a literary disquisition. Allegories become frequent, and the letters sent, or supposed to be sent, to Isaac at his home address furnish the material for many numbers. The Essay, in fact, or that part of the newspaper which goes to form public opinion, preponderates greatly over that portion which is devoted to the report of news. Spence quotes from a Mr. Chute: "I have heard Sir Richard Steele say that, though he had a greater share in the _Tatlers_ than in the _Spectators_, he thought the news article in the first of these was what contributed much to their success."[39] Chute, however, seems to speak with a certain grudge against Addison, and the statement ascribed by him to Steele is intrinsically improbable. It is not very likely that, as the proprietor of the _Tatler_, he would have dispensed with any element in it that contributed to its popularity, yet after No. 100 the news articles are seldom found. The truth is that Steele recognised the superiority of Addison's style, and with his usual quickness accommodated the form of his journal to the genius of the new contributor.

"I have only one gentleman," says he, in the preface to the _Tatler_, "who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent a.s.sistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in intimacy from childhood, considering the great ease with which he is able to despatch the most entertaining pieces of this nature. This good office he performed with such force of genius, humour, wit, and learning that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my own auxiliary; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him."

With his usual enthusiastic generosity, Steele, in this pa.s.sage, unduly depreciates his own merits to exalt the genius of his friend. A comparison of the amount of material furnished to the _Tatler_ by Addison and Steele respectively shows that out of 271 numbers the latter contributed 188 and the former only 42. Nor is the disparity in quant.i.ty entirely balanced by the superior quality of Addison's papers. Though it was, doubtless, his fine workmanship and admirable method which carried to perfection the style of writing initiated in the _Tatler_, yet there is scarcely a department of essay-writing developed in the _Spectator_ which does not trace its origin to Steele. It is Steele who first ventures to raise his voice against the prevailing dramatic taste of the age on behalf of the superior morality and art of Shakespeare's plays.

"Of all men living," says he, in the eighth _Tatler_, "I pity players (who must be men of good understanding to be capable of being such) that they are obliged to repeat and a.s.sume proper gestures for representing things of which their reason must be ashamed, and which they must disdain their audience for approving. The amendment of these low gratifications is only to be made by people of condition, by encouraging the n.o.ble representation of the n.o.ble characters drawn by Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impossible to return without strong impressions of honour and humanity. On these occasions distress is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our resentment placed according to the merit of the person afflicted.

Were dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who have genius would bend their studies to excel in them."

Steele, too, it was who attacked, with all the vigour of which he was capable, the fashionable vice of gambling. So severe were his comments on this subject in the _Tatler_ that he raised against himself the fierce resentment of the whole community of sharpers, though he was fortunate enough at the same time to enlist the sympathies of the better part of society. "Lord Forbes," says Mr. Nichols, the antiquary, in his notes to the _Tatler_, "happened to be in company with the two military gentlemen just mentioned" (Major-General Davenport and Brigadier Bisset) "in St.

James' Coffee-House when two or three well-dressed men, all unknown to his lordship or his company, came into the room, and in a public, outrageous manner abused Captain Steele as the author of the _Tatler_. One of them, with great audacity and vehemence, swore that he would cut Steele's throat or teach him better manners. 'In this country,' said Lord Forbes, 'you will find it easier to cut a purse than to cut a throat.' His brother officers instantly joined with his lordship and turned the cut-throats out of the coffee-house with every mark of disgrace."[40]

The practice of duelling, also, which had hitherto pa.s.sed unreproved, was censured by Steele in a series of papers in the _Tatler_, which seemed to have been written on an occasion when, having been forced to fight much against his will, he had the misfortune dangerously to wound his antagonist.[41] The sketches of character studied from life, and the letters from fict.i.tious correspondents, both of which form so noticeable a feature in the _Spectator_, appear roughly, but yet distinctly, drafted in the _Tatler_. Even the papers of literary criticism, afterwards so fully elaborated by Addison, are antic.i.p.ated by his friend, who may fairly claim the honour to have been the first to speak with adequate respect of the genius of Milton.[42] In a word, whatever was perfected by Addison was begun by Steele; if the one has for ever a.s.sociated his name with the _Spectator_, the other may justly appropriate the credit of the _Tatler_, a work which bears to its successor the same kind of relation that the frescoes of Masaccio bear, in point of dramatic feeling and style, to those of Raphael; the later productions deserving honour for finish of execution, the earlier for priority of invention.

The _Tatler_ was published till the 2d of January, 1710-11, and was discontinued, according to Steele's own account, because the public had penetrated his disguise, and he was therefore no longer able to preach with effect in the person of Bickerstaff. It may be doubted whether this was his real motive for abandoning the paper. He had been long known as its conductor; and that his readers had shown no disinclination to listen to him is proved, not only by the large circulation of each number of the _Tatler_, but by the extensive sale of the successive volumes of the collected papers at the high price of a guinea apiece. He was, in all probability, led to drop the publication by finding that the political element that the paper contained was a source of embarra.s.sment to him. His sympathies were vehemently Whig; the _Tatler_ from the beginning had celebrated the virtues of Marlborough and his friends, both directly and under cover of fiction; and he had been rewarded for his services with a commissionership of the Stamp-office. When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, Harley, setting a just value on the abilities of Steele, left him in the enjoyment of his office and expressed his desire to serve him in any other way. Under these circ.u.mstances, Steele no doubt felt it inc.u.mbent on him to discontinue a paper which, both from its design and its traditions, would have tempted him into the expression of his political partialities.

For two months, therefore, "the censorship of Great Britain," as he himself expressed it, "remained in commission," until Addison and he once more returned to discharge the duties of the office in the _Spectator_, the first number of which was published on the 1st of March, 1710-11. The _Tatler_ had only been issued three times a week, but the conductors of the new paper were now so confident in their own resources and in the favour of the public that they undertook to bring out one number daily.

The new paper at once exhibited the impress of Addison's genius, which had gradually transformed the character of the _Tatler_ itself. The latter was originally, in every sense of the word, a newspaper, but the Spectator from the first indulged his humour at the expense of the clubs of Quidnuncs.

"There is," says he, "another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve o'clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours."[43]

For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper differing from the _Tatler_, which proposed only to retail the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was required, and the new entertainment was provided by the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of several ideal types of character grouped round the central figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable cla.s.ses or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed interest; Captain Sentry speaks for the army; the Templar for the world of taste and learning; the clergyman for theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many opportunities for criticizing the traditions of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration. Thus, instead of the division of places which determined the arrangement of the _Tatler_, the different subjects treated in the _Spectator_ are distributed among a variety of persons: the Templar is subst.i.tuted for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will's; Will Honeycomb takes the place of White's; and Captain Sentry, whose appearances are rare, stands for the more voluminous article on foreign intelligence published in the old periodical, under the head of St. James's. The Spectator himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the paper which he conducts, than was that of the old astrologer.

The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and literature.

"Since," says he in one of his early numbers, "I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and a.s.siduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and a.s.semblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses."[44]

Johnson, in his _Life of Addison_, says that the task undertaken in the _Spectator_ was "first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted." He afterwards praises the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ by saying that they "adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness, and, like La Bruyere, exhibited the characters and manners of the age." This commendation scarcely does justice to the work of Addison and Steele. Casa, a man equally distinguished for profligacy and politeness, merely codified in his _Galateo_ the laws of good manners which prevailed in his age. He is the Lord Chesterfield of Italy.

Castiglione gives instructions to the young courtier how to behave in such a manner as to make himself agreeable to his prince. La Bruyere's characters are no doubt the literary models of those which appear in the _Spectator_. But La Bruyere merely described what he saw, with admirable wit, urbanity, and scholarship, but without any of the earnestness of a moral reformer. He could never have conceived the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and, though he was ready enough to satirise the follies of society as an observer from the outside, to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, to dwell in clubs and a.s.semblies," was far from being his ambition. He would probably have thought the publication of a newspaper scarcely consistent with his position as a gentleman.

A very large portion of the _Spectator_ is devoted to reflections on the manners of women. Addison saw clearly how important a part the female s.e.x was destined to play in the formation of English taste and manners.

Removed from the pedestal of enthusiastic devotion on which they had been placed during the feudal ages, women were treated under the Restoration as mere playthings and luxuries. As manners became more decent they found themselves secured in their emanc.i.p.ated position but dest.i.tute of serious and rational employment. It was Addison's object, therefore, to enlist the aid of female genius in softening, refining, and moderating the gross and conflicting tastes of a half-civilised society.

"There are none," he says, "to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amus.e.m.e.nts seem contrived for them, rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures, and are more adapted to the s.e.x than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the princ.i.p.al employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women, though I know there are mult.i.tudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles."[45]

To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild and social character of the _Spectator's_ satire did not commend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers to the _Tatler_ while it was in its infancy, found it too feminine for his taste. "I will not meddle with the _Spectator_," says he in his _Journal to Stella_, "let him _fair s.e.x_ it to the world's end." Personal pique, however, may have done as much as a differing taste to depreciate the _Spectator_ in the eyes of the author of the _Tale of a Tub_, for he elsewhere acknowledges its merits. "The _Spectator_," he writes to Stella, "is written by Steele, with Addison's help; it is often very pretty.... But I never see him (Steele) or Addison." That part of the public to whom the paper was specially addressed read it with keen relish. In the ninety-second number a correspondent, signing herself "Leonora,"[46] writes:

"Mr. Spectator,--Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, the _Spectator_ was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment."

In a subsequent number "Thomas Trusty" writes:

"I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning's pipe (though I can't forbear reading the motto before I fill and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by pulling some pieces of isingla.s.s over it was changed into a grave senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjuror, with many other different representations very entertaining (as you are), though still the same at the bottom."[47]

The _Spectator_ was read in all parts of the country.

"I must confess," says Addison, as his task was drawing to an end, "that I am not a little gratified and obliged by that concern which appears in this great city upon my present design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the kingdom alarmed upon this occasion, having received letters to expostulate with me about it from several of my readers of the remotest boroughs of Great Britain."[48]

With how keen an interest the public entered into the humour of the paper is shown by the following letter, signed "Philo-Spec:"

"I was this morning in a company of your well-wishers, when we read over, with great satisfaction, Tully's observations on action adapted to the British theatre, though, by the way, we were very sorry to find that you have disposed of another member of your club. Poor Sir Roger is dead, and the worthy clergyman dying; Captain Sentry has taken possession of a fair estate; Will Honeycomb has married a farmer's daughter; and the Templar withdraws himself into the business of his own profession."[49]

It is no wonder that readers antic.i.p.ated with regret the dissolution of a society that had provided them with so much delicate entertainment.

Admirably as the club was designed for maintaining that variety of treatment on which Mr. Trusty comments in the letter quoted above, the execution of the design is deserving of even greater admiration. The skill with which the grave speculations of the _Spectator_ are contrasted with the lively observations of Will Honeycomb on the fashions of the age, and these again are diversified with papers descriptive of character or adorned with fiction, while the letters from the public outside form a running commentary on the conduct of the paper, cannot be justly appreciated without a certain effort of thought. But it may safely be said that, to have provided society day after day, for more than two years, with a species of entertainment which, nearly two centuries later, retains all its old power to interest and delight, is an achievement unique in the history of literature. Even apart from the exquisite art displayed in their grouping, the matter of many of the essays in the _Spectator_ is still valuable. The vivid descriptions of contemporary manners, the inimitable series of sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley, the criticisms in the papers on _True and False Wit_ and Milton's _Paradise Lost_, have scarcely less significance for ourselves than for the society for which they were immediately written.

Addison's own papers were 274 in number, as against 236 contributed by Steele. They were, as a rule, signed with one of the four letters C. L.

I. O., either because, as Tickell seems to hint in his _Elegy_, they composed the name of one of the Muses, or, as later scholars have conjectured, because they were respectively written from four different localities--viz., Chelsea, London, Islington, and the Office.

The sale of the _Spectator_ was doubtless very large relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne's reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on the subject very shortly after the paper had been started: "My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day."[50] This number must have gone on increasing with the growing reputation of the _Spectator_. When the Preface of the _Four Sermons_ of Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Llandaff, was suppressed by order of the House of Commons, the _Spectator_ printed it in its 384th number, thus conveying, as the Bishop said in a letter to Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, "fourteen thousand copies of the condemned preface into people's hands that would otherwise have never seen or heard of it." Making allowance for the extraordinary character of the number, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the usual daily issue of the _Spectator_ to readers in all parts of the kingdom would, towards the close of its career, have reached ten thousand copies.

The separate papers were afterwards collected into octavo volumes, which were sold, like the volumes of the _Tatler_, for a guinea apiece. Steele tells us that more than nine thousand copies of each volume were sold off.[51]

Nothing could have been better timed than the appearance of the _Spectator_; it may indeed be doubted whether it could have been produced with success at any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been diverted to other subjects, and he would have been unlikely to survey the world with quite impartial eyes; had the publication been delayed it would have come before the public when the balance of all minds was disturbed by the dangers of the political situation. The difficulty of preserving neutrality under such circ.u.mstances was soon shown by the fate of the _Guardian_. Shortly after the _Spectator_ was discontinued this new paper was designed by the fertile invention of Steele, with every intention of keeping it, like its predecessor, free from the entanglements of party.

But it had not proceeded beyond the forty-first number when the vehement partizanship of Steele was excited by the Tory _Examiner_; in the 128th number appeared a letter, signed "An English Tory," calling for the demolition of Dunkirk, while soon afterwards, finding that his political feelings were hampered by the design on which the _Guardian_ was conducted, he dropped it and replaced it with a paper called the _Englishman_. Addison himself, who had been a frequent contributor to the _Guardian_, did not aid in the _Englishman_, of the violent party tone of which he strongly disapproved. A few years afterwards the old friends and coadjutors in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ found themselves maintaining an angry controversy in the opposing pages of the _Old Whig_ and the _Plebeian_.

CHAPTER VI.

_CATO._

It is a peculiarity in Addison's life that Fortune, as if conspiring with the happiness of his genius, constantly furnished him with favourable opportunities for the exercise of his powers. The pension granted him by Halifax enabled him, while he was yet a young man, to add to his knowledge of cla.s.sical literature an intimate acquaintance with the languages and governments of the chief European states. When his fortunes were at the lowest ebb on his return from his travels, his introduction to G.o.dolphin by Halifax, the consequence of which was _The Campaign_, procured him at once celebrity and advancement. The appearance of the _Tatler_, though due entirely to the invention of Steele, prepared the way for development of the genius that prevailed in the _Spectator_. But the climax of Addison's good fortune was certainly the successful production of _Cato_, a play which, on its own merits, might have been read with interest by the scholars of the time, but which could scarcely have succeeded on the stage if it had not been appropriated and made part of our national life by the violence of political pa.s.sion.

Addison had not the genius of a dramatist. The grace, the irony, the fastidious refinement which give him such an unrivalled capacity in describing and criticising the humours of men as a _spectator_ did not qualify him for imaginative sympathy with their actions and pa.s.sions. But, like most men of ability in that period, his thoughts were drawn towards the stage, and even in Dryden's lifetime he had sent him a play in ma.n.u.script, asking him to use his interest to obtain its performance. The old poet returned it, we are told, "with many commendations, but with an expression of his opinion that on the stage it would not meet with its deserved success." Addison, nevertheless, persevered in his attempts, and during his travels he wrote four acts of the tragedy of _Cato_, the design of which, according to Tickell, he had formed while he was at Oxford, though he certainly borrowed many incidents in the play from a tragedy on the same subject which he saw performed at Venice.[52] It is characteristic, however, of the undramatic mood in which he executed his task that the last act was not written till shortly before the performance of the play, many years later. As early as 1703 the drama was shown to Cibber by Steele, who said that "whatever spirit Mr. Addison had shown in his writing it, he doubted that he would ever have courage enough to let his _Cato_ stand the censure of an English audience; that it had only been the amus.e.m.e.nt of his leisure hours in Italy, and was never intended for the stage." He seems to have remained of the same opinion on the very eve of the performance of the play. "When Mr. Addison," says Pope, as reported by Spence, "had finished his _Cato_ he brought it to me, desired to have my sincere opinion of it, and left it with me for three or four days. I gave him my opinion of it sincerely, which was, 'that I thought he had better not act it, and that he would get reputation enough by only printing it.' This I said as thinking the lines well written, but the piece not theatrical enough. Some time after Mr. Addison said 'that his own opinion was the same with mine, but that some particular friends of his, whom he could not disoblige, insisted on its being acted.'"[53]

Undoubtedly, Pope was right in principle, and anybody who reads the thirty-ninth paper in the _Spectator_ may see not only that Addison was out of sympathy with the traditions of the English stage, but that his whole turn of thought disqualified him from comprehending the motives of dramatic composition. "The modern drama," says he, "excels that of Greece and Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable--but, what a Christian writer would be ashamed to own, falls infinitely short of it in the moral part of the performance." And the entire drift of the criticism that follows relates to the thought, the sentiment, and the expression of the modern drama, rather than to the really essential question, the nature of the action. It is false criticism to say that the greatest dramas of Shakespeare fail in morality as compared with those of the Greek tragedians. That the manner in which the moral is conveyed is different in each case is of course true, since the subjects of Greek tragedy were selected from Greek mythology, and were treated by aeschylus and Sophocles, at all events, in a religious spirit, whereas the plays of Shakespeare are only indirectly Christian, and produce their effect by an appeal to the individual conscience. None the less is it the case that _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, and _Lear_ have for modern audiences a far deeper moral meaning than the _Agamemnon_ or the _Oedipus Tyrannus_. The tragic motive in Greek tragedy is the impotence of man in the face of moral law or necessity; in Shakespeare's tragedies it is the corruption of the will, some sin of the individual against the law of G.o.d, which brings its own punishment. There was nothing in this principle of which a Christian dramatist need have been ashamed; and as regards Shakespeare, at any rate, it is evident that Addison's criticism is unjust.